Joseph As we traveled through China I was often struck by things that to me seemed strange, interesting, amazing, disgusting or wonderful.  For me, more interesting than just site seeing, is observing how people are different and how they are the same in different parts of the world.  I’ve compiled a list of personal observations…

Joseph Every region of China has its local food specialties and Guilin/Yangshuo is no exception. We try to  eat the local specialties as much as possible, although so far we have avoided rodents, insects and dog. The subtropical climate here makes ideal conditions for growing citrus fruits and we made sure to always have some…

Joseph and Penny See the new China/Yangshuo photo album. Yangshuo is described in guidebooks as "travelers mecca" and as the "legendary backpacker hangout".   The town of approximately 300,000 people has become a really popular tourist destination in southern China, in part because of its famous pointy green mountains, know as karst.  Thankfully, you can easily…

Penny How would you feel about having a foot massage for a full 50 minutes?  It seems that it is now the rage (or even the norm) in Hong Kong for the yuppie crowd to do!  So, based on our friend Samuel’s very (very) strong recommendation, we agreed to all go have our feet rubbed…

Joseph On the train ride to Hong Kong Penny updated our expense tracking spreadsheet and we were pleased to find that to date we were significantly below budget.  Since arriving in HK we’ve been living the high life and have eaten up a large part of that surplus.  Here’s one of the many ways to…

Joseph   As our time in Hangzhou was over we bought train tickets to Hong Kong.  We tried to buy “hard sleeper” class because they’re cheaper but there were only soft sleeper tickets available.  As we boarded the L139 train for our 23 hour journey, we were thankful to have the soft sleeper tickets.  The…

Penny See the new China 3 photo album! There is a Chinese saying that states "Rather go 3 days without salt than 1 day without tea".  Most Chinese carry with them a thermos or glass container with brewed loose leaf tea – I think that it is comparable to the plastic water bottles that everyone…

Joseph Here’s a video from our last day in Beijing when rented two bikes and rode around for the morning.  Biking is great in Beijing; the bike lanes are wide and the city is completely flat.  No helmets are provided of course.

Penny Well, what we have seen of the city is very impressive.  It has a true New York feel and people are bustling all over the place… Unfortunately, this is all we could say after being in Shanghai for 3 days.  After our first night here, Joe and I became ill.  It seems that we…

Joseph See the China 2 album for pictures from the Great Wall. China sent up their first astronaut almost exactly one year ago.  When Yang Liwei came down he said that contrary to popular belief he was not able to see the Great Wall from orbit.  China announced that in the future all its textbooks…